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Texas Tops Money-Making Athletic Departments

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The University of Texas at Austin's athletics department brought in upwards of $150 million in revenue in 2010-11, more than any other institution and nearly $19 million more than its closest competitor, Ohio State University. The latest annual update to USA Today’s mammoth database on revenue and expenses at institutions in Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association notes that just 22 athletic departments are operating in the black. Spending across the 227 public universities for which USA Today could gather data rose by $267 million from a year earlier. (Athletic success at Texas will have some payoff for the institution's academic side, which for the next five years will collect half the profits from its 24-hour cable channel, the Longhorn Network. Last year that amounted to $6 million.) Other top revenue-generating programs include the Universities of Alabama ($124.5 million), Florida ($123.5 million) and Michigan ($122.7 million), as well as Pennsylvania State University ($116.1 million), the Universities of Tennessee ($104.4 million) and Oklahoma ($104.3 million), Auburn University ($104 million) and the University of Wisconsin ($96.3 million).